Secretary of State Reinhardt has estimated that these increases will raise revenue by one-third. Such estimate appears to be optimistic, and in any case even this increase of revenue would not be enough. There is a limit to which taxation can be raised, and the Nazis appear to have reached it, The second method is the method of loan—the British Government is adopting & mixture of the first and second methods, But here the Nazi-are in serious difficulty for the Ger-]|man.publie shows no willingness te invest its meagre savings in Government bonds. At the beginning of the war, indeed, the German leaders asserted that they would not approach the public for loans at all, but the latest reports suggest that this initial plan has now been changed, The loans will in any case yield little, for the German investor has little confidence in Government securities, So the Nazis will be forced towards the third alternative, H. the commandeering of private property. by the reduction in quality, and the pressure upon the "maximum prices" is shown by the constant flow of coses in which shopkeepers are heavy ily fined for raising prices, The plan for payment in tax certificates has already broken down, for industrialists have no confidence in the tax certificates, so that their market value has fallen to 94 per cent, of their face value.
All this means that the position is potentially highly inflationary and is full of danger for the Nazi authorities. In other countries, some increase in prices will be tolerated the public, for there is general confidence in the currency. But in Germany, the man-in-the-street fears inflation more than anything else.
The German public remembers the appalling catastrophe of 1923, when the mark was quoted at thousands of milliards to*the pound, In the first Week of wal, there lore signs (in Germany of flight from. the mark and wild purchases of pictures, furniture and durable commodities of all kinds,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.